Kings drop Bruins in shootout

Summary – It took overtime and a shootout to decide the winner between the Bruins and Kings in front of a sold out TD Garden on Saturday night. In the end, it was the Kings who were able to claim two points as Jarret Stoll had the game-deciding goal in the shootout. Tim Thomas, despite 31 saves in regulation and overtime, took the loss for the Bruins while Jonathan Quick got the win with 27 saves. The Bruins have lost seven straight, their longest losing streak since the spring of 1997, when they went 0-7-0 from March 17 to April 3 of that year.

Marco Sturm returned to the ice after missing the last six games and scored a goal in the second period. Steve Begin also got back on the ice after missing five games and played forward on the fourth line.

The teams went back and forth with the Kings taking the lead into the second period off a goal by captain Dustin Brown set up by a shot from Anze Kopitar. It looked like another night where the Bruins would have trouble breaking through, but Boston found momentum in the second period when defenseman Mark Stuart leveled Kopitar with a hit on the blue line that led to a scrum with Kings forward Wayne Simmonds.

Sturm tied the game with a power-play goal later in the second, and Boston took the lead early in the third on the power play when Mark Recchi scored off a pass from the half-wall by David Krejci. The Kings came rightbackwith a goal from Kopitar and the play was even through the rest of the third before overtime.

Three Stars

Marco Sturm — The Bruins forward scored his team’s first goal of the game after missing six games with a lower body injury. On the power play in the second period, he found himself camped in front of Quick with time and space off a pass from Marc Savard. He let a defender slide by, waited, waited and found the back of the net on Quick’s stick side.

Anze Kopitar — The Kings’ leading scorer is deadly with the puck from the right wing. Twice from the top of the circle he let go of wily wrist shots that found ways past Thomas. He was credited with an assist in the first period when his shot deflected off Dustin Brown and tied the game in the third when Thomas could not handle a screamer from a couple steps in from the blue line.

Jarret Stoll — The Kings center had the game winner in the sixth round of the sudden death shootout.

Turning Point

A flurry of penalties broke out early in the second period. At 4:58 in the second period, Bruins defenseman Mark Stuart laid Kopitar flat on the ice with a big hit as the Kings forward took a clearing pass at his own blue line. Kings forward Wayne Simmonds immediately took exception to the hit on the rising star center, and he and Stuart immediately went at it, with Stuart tackling Simmonds to the ice.

The result was that Simmonds went to the box with instigator, unsportsmanlike conduct, fighting and misconduct penalties (Stuart also went for fighting) that resulted in a four-minute power play opportunity the Bruins. Tim Thomas gave two minutes of that back with a high stick to Brad Richardson 29 seconds later and the Kings killed the penalties. Still, the Bruins gained momentum over the series of plays that later translated into a game-tying power play goal by Sturm in the period.

Key Play

Stoll turned TD Garden from a rocking venue to a silent arena in a matter of moments when he beat Thomas over the goaltender’s shoulder in the sixth round of the shootout. The Kings ended up winning the series 3-2 for the two points. Stoll’s goal followed up scores from the Bruins’ Marc Savard and Michael Ryder and the Kings’ Kopitar and Ryan Smyth.